Yesterday we discussed how focusing on a process for your digital marketing will empower you to take control over your strategy. But, once you've got a process, and you've discovered and convinced your CEO to invest in that process – you've got to have a way to measure it. What does success look like?
There's
a lot of talk these days about why it's so important to be a data driven
marketer. Software vendors will extol the ability to achieve a "high return on investment". We strive to prove our case using ROI from every campaign. We are buried in statistics such as "Cost Per Lead" and "Cost Per Acquisition", "Traffic Cost", "Page Views", "Followers", "Retweets" etc.. etc… And this is absolutely wrong-headed.. If you're using your Analytics to prove something
- then you're using Analytics incorrectly.
Analytics Are WMD – Weapons Of Mass Delusion
In the wrong hands, a notebook full of statistics is a disaster waiting to happen. Put simply, data
doesn't convert customers. I've been in
marketing for 15 years and never once has a graph of more visits or telling a
prospective customer my conversion metric – or frankly telling my CEO the
percentage of conversions vs. bounces – made any of my campaigns any more successful. It's always compelling,
creative content… A great call to action… A trusted relationship… A
personal touch… That is what converts customers.
Data is
only important if you have something RELEVANT to measure. Ask yourself this question. Would you rather:
- A: Tell
your CEO that Web traffic doubled from 20,000 to 40,000 visits per month – but
sales remained flat.
or… - B: Tell
your CEO that traffic decreased by half 20,000 to 10,000 but sales doubled.
My guess
is that you went with B….. And if you
can say marketing costs are flat, and revenue
doubled – you just earned your Bonus for that quarter..
So, yes
of course in order to get to B – you absolutely need to have your finger on the pulse all of those
metrics I mentioned previously. And
establishing a great base of measurement ensures that you can measure
EVERYTHING you need.
But that's the key – need. Just because you can measure something doesn't mean you necessarily should report on it.
So, let's
make it real… What does your CEO
need to know:
How do
we build this process for building our measurement plan. Now, certainly your analytics will be unique to you, but
here are four ideas to keep in mind as you develop your plan:
As you move down the pyramid you add more and more of the things your measuring, and these are less and less important to actually provide reports on. By the time you get to the bottom – these are numbers that only you know. 2. Always Be Learning & Making Subtle Changes Measurement is constantly shifting – and this is key as you build your Analytics pyramid. You will definitely change methodology for measurement as you move forward – but if you focus your strategy on making subtle changes to individual methodology – these should not have an affect on how you report those key 4 or 5 KPI’s to 3. Getting Creative And Effective Measurement Is Not An Oxymoron Interpreting analytics is frequently not as straight forward as a “science”. Sometimes, as a marketer, you can, and should do things that fly in the face of the numbers – either from a branding perspective, or some other business or creative function. For example, I have one client – a national telecommunications provider – where the CEO loved the lower converting creative, and hated the higher converting version. It wasn’t a lot lower – but lower nonetheless. We talked it through. Guess which one we kept. 4. Analytics Is Insight Into Action When determining whether you should report on something, the question should always be – what is the action we can take based on the result of this reporting. Every report should have a point of insight that drives us to a creative action – either changing content, design, or business strategy to adapt to new experiments to test.
your CEO. Your CEO does not need to know that the definition of Web Page Visit has changed in your reporting. You should always be learning how those subtle changes affect your numbers so that when you report those key 5 – you are confident in them.
5. Budget for success AND failure…. Don’t take on measurement or try one tactic unless you have permission to fail…. You will succeed… And you will fail… And If all you’re focused on is a hard ROI for every single marketing tactic you have already lost. Your CEO must give you and your team permission to not succeed at one or more tactics. Blogging may not work. A whitepaper tactic may fail. The social media strategy may succeed beyond your wildest dreams. But budget for small experiments that allow you to test, iterate, measure and test again. So, your CEO now knows that you're in control. You own the process. You're content driven to match buyer behavior and you've got a process around management of your measurement. Your built to improve. Tomorrow we'll look at the third aspect. I won't say last – lest it feel like a matching set of luggage. But it's the third and last that I have for you in this series nonetheless. Tomorrow we'll look at why your CEO needs to understand that this is a marathon, not a sprint… Photo By: chris runoff
